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Saturday, January 30, 2010

I Love These Biographies

I love to read biographies. In particular, I enjoy reading about the lives of different missionaries. The reality is, however, that many biographies are very long, often including all sorts of extraneous details that do not interest me. I would rather read, for example, three different biographies that are 200 pages long instead of one 600 page biography.

This is where YWAM biographies are great. Every biography focuses on the life of a missionary and is about 200 pages long. Additionally, they are written at an easy reading level so even a slow reader (like me) can complete them fairly rapidly. I've read three in just a last few weeks.

This morning I finished reading about an amazing individual who I had never heard much about before. Sundar Singh was born in the late 1800's into a Sikh family in northern India. After his conversion to Christianity, he wanted to tell other Indians about Jesus Christ. The problem he saw, however, was that European missionaries in India at the time were expecting Indians to basically become European when they surrendered to Christ. Sundar realized this was a problem.

Sundar sought to teach and proclaim Christianity within the Indian context in a manner that could be understood. He traveled all over the country with simply his clothes, a blanket, and a bible. He wore no shoes and had no money. Sundar endured tremendous trial and suffering. On top of everything else, his Sikh family rejected Him.

This book tells not only about the above events, but also recounts God's faithfulness as Sundar traveled to Israel, Europe, the USA, and the Far East. In particular, we read about Sundar's amazing persistence in hiking over the Himalaya Mountains in order to take the gospel to Tibet. That is where he ended up dying - at age 40.

This book is exciting, encouraging, and challenging (not the reading level, but the content). In fact, all the YWAM biographies I have read have been this way; I've read a total of about five so far.

One of the best aspects of these YWAM biographies is that at the of each one there is a bibliography of other biographies the authors used as resources. So, if you are really interested in the person you are reading about, you can choose a book to read from the bibliography to read and learn more.

2 comments:

We enjoy these biographies too. I've read some on Sadhu Sundar Singh's life, but not from this particular series. In fact, I'm not sure we have this one. Guess we'll have to add it soon. Thanks for sharing.